


come as you are

by Adarian



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Except that Steve Rogers is probably going to die and that will destroy me, F/F, F/M, Pre-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Written before I knew what was happening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 20:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18373067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adarian/pseuds/Adarian
Summary: After Carol Danvers returns to Earth post-Snap, she bonds with Thor at an abandoned bar where they drink far too strong Asgardian alcohol and talk about how amazing their wives are.





	come as you are

**Author's Note:**

> one of those guest kudos is me - I've got to stop checking comments on my phone!

**CN: brief discussion of alcoholism, white people concerned about homophobia/racism for their partners, Carol is Very Worried about Steve and she has decent reason to be**

Carol was not a talker. She was a doer. She always had been. The Avengers, so far, had seemed to be mostly talkers. There was so much talking. Constant talking. What ifs and statistics and reminisces and delaying again and again from the big questions. There were just meetings. So many meetings. She had flown half way across the galaxy for things that could have been discussed over the airwaves. It was starting to drive her nuts.

After one of these meetings, the depressed demi-god in a sweatsuit jogged after her.

"Captain Danvers," Thor greeted. "I have been keeping watch on an old friend's establishment since he has gone amiss. He was keeping some Asgardian spirits for me. I was wondering if you would come and have a drink with me."

Carol was slightly amused by the turn of phrase. _Gone amiss_. Not written out of reality or turned to ash. _Gone amiss_.

"I appreciate the offer," she said diplomatically, "but I'm married." 

Thor replied with a chuckle, "It was meant to be a friendly outing. The others do not know it yet, but I am married as well. Does that change your mind?" 

Carol raised an eyebrow. It seemed a weird secret for a guy to be keeping from his friends at the end of the world, but he probably had his reasons. He looked like he was telling the truth though, so she nodded and gestured for him to lead on.

Carol stole Rogers' bike and she drove them to the bar on the far edge of town. It was boarded up and the door blocked with an anvil. Thor easily moved it and let her enter first. It wasn't much to look at, really. There was a jukebox that seemed to only have the Smiths, Stevie Nicks, and Nirvana. A beat up pool table. A half dozen tables and a few misaligned bar stools. It was clean though. Someone had been taking care of the place. She suspected Thor might be visiting it a bit more frequently than he had first suggested. He certainly knew where the bartender kept the good stuff.

Carol sat at the bar while Thor poured them both a pint of something dark and bitter. From the size of it, she had expected it to be some sort of ale but at taking a first sip, she felt like she had drunk battery acid. It took all of her will not to spit it back up. She winced but she took another sip. 

"It is not a good vintage," Thor admitted, "but there is little left in all the galaxy now that Asgard is gone. It is a lingering drink. It is one to have long conversations over, not one to get intoxicated immediately with." 

Carol replied, "I haven't gotten drunk in twenty years. I think this will do the trick."

Thor sat down beside her with his own glass. They clinked glasses before he took a hard gulp of his drink and set it hard on the counter.

Thor did not look at her as he asked, "You said you were married. Are they..."

Carol smiled weakly. "She's okay. I couldn't get a hold of her but Monica - our daughter - she talked to her. Maria's posted at a restricted base. Monica's on the ISS right now but she's prepping to evacuate. I've told her to come to the Avengers compound to hide out but she's not exactly the hiding out kind." 

Thor replied, "You do not look old enough to have an astronaut as a child."

Carol reached into her jacket and unfolded a photo clipped from a newspaper. "Since I got my powers, I've been aging a lot slower. Here, this is from two years ago. There's my little girl all suited up and ready for launch. I guess I shouldn't call her that. She'll be 36 this year. But she's always going to be my little Lieutenant Trouble."

Thor smiled as he held the photo. "You must be very proud. I see you greatly in her. She holds herself the same way. I imagine she shares your fearlessness in battle as well."

Carol smiled. "Yeah, she's picked up all of my bad habits. I was hoping she'd turn out a bit more like Maria, but she's not exactly the most levelheaded person either. We're all thrill seekers. Maria and I met in the Air Force flying fighter jets and Monica got her pilot license when she was eighteen."

Thor handed it back to her and Carol put it back in her inside jacket pocket, next to her heart. She took another drink and then asked softly, "And your partner?" 

Thor confessed near silently, "I do not know. Our ship was attacked by Thanos and she led the evacuation. I know some of our people must have survived his victory, but I do not know if she was among them. My wife is stronger than everything in this universe other than death. If our people lived, she would not risk communicating that on such a wide channel. Her duty is to them now, not to me. I would do the same if I were in her position, but that is of little comfort." 

"What does your gut tell you?" Carol asked.

Thor murmured, "That she lives. If she does...she is in great danger, every day, and I am not able to help her. Our plan was to return to Earth, but we were nearly ten months away before the attack. If she manages it, it will still be a long time before I see her again. She..."

Thor closed his eyes for a moment and took a large swig before continuing, "When we married, I was the only remaining member of the royal family. Besides my brother, but that was...complicated and he is gone now. I thought for the sake of our people we should have a child, even though neither of us was really ready. My Hilde was scared, we both were, but it would be a greater risk to her than me. I did not have to convince her. In the end, she was practical and stubborn and convinced me when I was afraid. She had gone from relying on no one to looking to our community. It would not be just our child but Asgard's. We were trying to conceive when we were separated. We thought at the time that she might be expecting but it was too early to know. If she is out there, alone and scared, with our child...it would be my fault. I remained to fight, to give my people a chance to escape. I expected to die. I did not expect to be in comfort on Earth while they struggled to survive."

Sometime during his confession, Carol had put her hand on his. He covered it with his own and apologized. "Forgive me. I have not spoken to anyone of it since I have returned. I invited you here to get to know you better and for you to have some space from the others. I did not intend to unburden myself to you when you did not assent to me doing so. It is not your role to comfort me and I should not have imposed on you." 

Carol admitted, "The two weeks before I got here, before I knew about my family...I thought I was going to die. My heart was constantly racing. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. People like us...most of us don't get to have families. I get it. It's hard to save the world when you've got two people you'd let it burn for. I didn't really get to be there for Maria and Monica. I had to make a choice. It's been hard. It's always been hard, but I knew I had to do it. You don't realize how much it's going to kill you. I appreciate your being concerned, but it's good to talk about. Like I said, superheroes don't usually get married for a reason. They definitely don't have kids for a better one. I don't know how you're getting out of bed in the morning."

"Because my wife is the last living Valkyrie and she is a better warrior than any I have ever met," Thor replied with a smile. "She has much more right to be worried about me than I have to be about her."

"So why haven't you told your friends that you're married?" 

Thor's cheeks went slightly pink. "Banner does know, in a way, but he was in another form then and does not fully remember. It is...you must understand, I am not embarrassed for marrying my wife. It is just that since I was part of the Avengers, I had only courted one woman and she was greatly liked by them. Jane was incredible. Intelligent, impressive, beautiful, kind.... but we were not right for each other. Brunnhilde is very different from her. She can be just as cruel as she can be kind. She is dangerous when she is enraged and more so when she is focused. She is a heavy drinker and when she stopped to have a child she was not well in body or mind for some time. She is imperfect, but so am I and we are perfect for each other. I just worry that they will not understand her. They loved Jane and it would break my heart if they did not love Hilde too."

Carol grew more and more irritated as he spoke. "I was a white woman living with a black woman in Louisiana in the 1980's. I get the whole hiding thing, but I never hid it from my friends. If they didn't like it, they could go jump off a cliff. I lied to protect my wife and child from bigots. You're lying because it's inconvenient and your badass wife embarrasses you."

Thor went bright red. "I did not mean to offend, I just-"

Carol rolled her eyes and took another drink. "You want them to think you're still perfect and not just screwed up as the rest of them. And trust me, Thor, they're screwed up more than the two of us are. Your wife's a Valkyrie. She has every right to be how she is and she's not some prize for you to tote around and show off."

Thor tried to explain, "They are my family, Captain Danvers, and now she is too. She is not like them. She is...she is more like you and your wife. Her skin is like your daughter's and her heart is like yours. I am not her first spouse. Her first was a fellow Valkyrie who died in her arms. Neither thing on my planet means what it means here on Earth. I fear what they think, even if they do not say it. To know that those who would love me would not love my wife...there has already been much I have learned of my family that I wish were not true. I do not wish to learn that my brothers and sister in arms are prejudiced."

At this, Carol softened. "Oh."

Thor murmured, "I should have said this part first."

Carol shook her head. "No, no, it's okay. I get it. It's easier to not know. I...my Dad...yeah, I get it. They might mess up. But they're good people and they mean well and they care about you. But I also get that if anyone looked the wrong way at my wife, I'd knock them out cold." 

Thor grinned. "Brunnhilde would do that for me."

Carol laughed. "I don't doubt it." 

Carol tapped on her glass as she considered what she wanted to say next. "You know Rogers would probably be able to drink this stuff and not die. You could bring him here sometime. I think he'd be a decent guy to talk to."

Thor shook his head. "No, I would not let him know this is here. I have seen what the drink has done to my wife. It saved her life for a time and then it shredded it further. He is already on the brink. I would not give him a push."

Carol agreed, "Maybe. But he needs to talk to someone or he's going to break in two. I know what burnout looks like. He's going to crash if he doesn't do something soon. That's true for most of your crew, but he's a walking time bomb. Besides, if you're worried about all your friends being bigots, you know you've at least got him."

Thor frowned. "What do you mean?"

It took a microsecond for her to realize that the rest of the Avengers had not picked up on what she had immediately and she quickly backtracked, "I mean that he served with an integrated unit during the War. He can't be all that bad." 

As Thor nodded and agreed, Carol wondered in puzzlement how none of the team seemed to realize that Steve Rogers was a walking billboard of a bisexual disaster. But then she remembered that people assumed that her and Maria were just friends after a decade of living together. People didn't notice things they weren't looking for. Like Rogers' inevitable mental breakdown after losing his "best friend". Even as a little kid reading about Captain America in school, she had thought he and Bucky had been in love. She had said it to some loser too who made fun of her for it. She was pretty sure she had decked him, but she couldn't remember her childhood really well. It sounds like something she would have done. 

Thor said, "I will tell them tonight and then at least I can speak my fears for her aloud. Banner will be there for me. He cares about her a great deal. The rest, it does not matter, not now. As either husband or widower, I will never cease speaking of my wife's wonder and victories ever again. And I hope if you ever chance to meet her, you will not tell her of this conversation."

"Oh, I totally will," Carol retorted, "and we'll roast you for it." 

"Then I look forward to that. She has always said that I am too protective of the ones I love and too eager to remain in their good graces. I am perhaps foolish to worry about the views of my teammates. They are good people. They will welcome her." 

Carol was halfway done her drink and her head was starting to spin a little. 

"Can you drive a motorcycle?" She asked.

"Not as well as you, but I can if need be." 

"Then I'm switching to water for a bit. You want one?"

Thor declined as she went behind the counter and found a bottle in the fridge. She came back and sat cross-legged on the bar stool, facing Thor. He attempted the same but his legs were too thick to do so and he went back to resting his feet on the lowest rung of the seat. He finished his drink and took her pint. He sipped hers as she drank her water. 

"Tell me about Monica," Thor said. "Are you her sire? If that is not too rude to ask." 

"Her what? Oh, no, I'm not the father," Carol explained. "Maria went out with this guy once and she found out she was pregnant two months later. We weren't really together then. We were sort of. We wanted to make it official but we thought it was a bad idea for a lot of different reasons. When she told me she was having a baby that made up my mind for me. Right then, I joked I'd make an honest woman out of her and I moved in the next day. Then that was that. We'd known each other for years and we were best friends. It wasn't much of a change, really. We had about seven months of just the two of us and then Monica came into the world and everything clicked into place. It was hard with both of us being in the service, especially those first few years before she went to daycare, but we made it work."

They fell into easy conversation from there, sharing stories of their lives. Their origins were so different but they surprisingly had a decent amount in common. Once Carol felt sober enough to drive and Thor was sloshed enough to sleep, she drove them back to the compound and carried him up to bed. When she went back down to slip the keys back into Steve's coat, she found her fellow Captain at the door, patting his pockets in confusion. Carol sheepishly handed them over to him. 

Steve took his keys back with a weak smile. "I'm glad someone's using her. I haven't taken the bike out since I left for Germany. 

"She's a good ride," Carol said. "You need to tune the exhaust though. I think I woke up most of the neighbourhood with that racket. Where are you headed?"

"Just for a walk. But if you've already woken everyone up, maybe I'll take a ride." 

It was the first time she had seen him where he hadn't looked terminally ill, but he still looked like he hadn't slept in three days. He might not have, now that she thought about it. She hadn't seen him go in the sleeping quarters at all since she got there. 

"You okay to drive?" She asked.

He nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine."

He wasn't, but he wasn't about to wrap his bike around a tree. She wished him a good night before heading up to her own room. It had once belonged to Wanda before she had been forced on the run. She tried not to think about the poor kid, just one of many lost. At least she hadn't been alone. Monica had been the only astronaut who had survived on the ISS. Carol thought about that every day, how scared her girl had been, not knowing what was happening, agonizing over why she had lived and no one else had. 

She heard Steve leave and after awhile she found herself drawn back downstairs. She waited in the kitchen until she heard him safely return and wordlessly went back to her room. She laid on her bed, taking out the other photos she kept in her jacket. She held out a Polaroid from the early 1980s, faded but she knew it well enough to know what it was. Maria and Carol goofing off on the tarmac, Maria leaping into Carol's arms and her new friend catching her, both laughing hard. 

She had only been able to speak to Monica for a few minutes before the connection cut out. She wasn't sure if Monica was asking if Maria was okay or saying that Maria was okay. Carol had known for a long time she would outlive her wife. They had talked about it a few times, but Maria said she just wanted to focus on the time they had together, not on everything that had lost. 

There should have been more time. And if this worked...then maybe there would be.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) We all talk about how amazing Carol was kicking butt to "Just A Girl" but her power walk to "Come As You Are"? Poetic cinema. Just beautiful.
> 
> 2) I don't think I have ever had such a strong opinion on a ship as I do about Carol being with Maria and Thor being with Valkyrie. Like did you watch the same movies as me? This is the truth.
> 
> 3) Carol Danvers' backstory is so hard to write because it's so different in every single thing. I am always pro Kelly Sue DeConnick's version of Carol Danvers as Chuck Yeager so I love MCU Carol.
> 
> 4) I read a post where someone mentioned Monica being on the ISS and I loved it so that's a headcanon now
> 
> 5) I had no idea about the deep history of Monica Rambeau in the MCU and I'll be more than a little disappointed if she doesn't show up in Endgame to kick all of the ass. OG Captain Marvel, y'all. 
> 
> 6) I also have very strong opinions about Valkyrie being canonically bisexual
> 
> 7) Thor is the guy who wears a t-shirt saying "I'm not bisexual but my wife is."


End file.
